His Dark Materials
by Aro Holmes
Summary: While imprisoned in Asgard, Loki is infected with the Aether and finds a dark lover who will save his life and consume his soul. Strange hurt/comfort AU drabble.


_Author Note: So I wrote this as a bit of Aro/Loki drabble when I should have been updating my other Aro fics. It's strange and doesn't completely make sense but I couldn't not write it, so here it is. In this AU variant, Aro is the Aether and Loki is the man of his dreams._

_Warning: bizarre mature situations and violence._

* * *

He was devastated really, because he had wanted to believe he was beyond all this, that he could make his own way in the world.

And now here he was.

The prison was metaphorical as well as physical. He would never be free of his 'birthright' as Odin had so sadistically put it, his birthright to die, alone and abandoned. And because Odin had saved him from this, he should be ever so grateful and humble and take whatever little handouts they choose to give him. Because he was nothing, had nothing, was capable of doing nothing but serving those who had a right to live, to rule, to control. Thor's little companion, Frigga's little pet, Odin's little good deed.

Loki lay on his back on his prison cell bed and idly tossed a goblet in the air with one hand, catching and releasing it with a casual air that completely obscured the turmoil in his mind.

Over and over again the goblet rose in the air and fell back into his hand. Over and over again his mind traced the same paths. Inside he was all pain and betrayed love. And what could he do with this? Cry on Frigga's shoulder like a boy with a bruised knee? But even she, who could never stop loving him, could also never understand him.

They would all never understand him.

The sound of a powerful explosion and the cries of the guards distracted Loki from his thoughts. He caught the goblet and sat up quickly. A small feminine figure came running down the corridor between the cell blocks and stopped in front of him, shaking and out of breath.

"Jane Foster?" Loki exclaimed in disbelief, recognizing the human girl so beloved of Thor.

"Loki," she panted, "I can't...it's making me...stop it!" She thrust her hands at the cell's force field.

"Don't, you'll hurt yourself!" shouted Loki, stepping back quickly as the force field crackled and shone from the contact.

Jane screamed but kept pushing. Loki watched in amazement as a strange reddish black fog began to seep out of her, penetrating the force field and rearing up in front of him in curling plumes.

Loki had only a moment to stare, backing away slowly, before the substance lunged at him, surrounding him, pushing inside him.

Nothing existed but this. Loki lay suspended within the substance, the living entity, the thing that was completely alive and yet like nothing he had ever encountered before. He was helpless in its grasp and could do nothing but endure as it saturated his body and his mind.

In the midst of the darkness, a voice spoke to him, soft and caressing.

_You are mine, Loki of Asgard. I will never leave you, never betray you, never hurt you. You will never be alone again. You are mine._

The last word was a hiss that seemed to drive itself through Loki's heart. A single tear of dark red trailed down Loki's immobilized face, and his eyes turned a solid dark gold.

It seemed to him that the darkness smiled at him now, satisfied.

Loki awoke to find himself still in his prison cell, flat on the floor. Jane lay unconscious on the ground outside the cell, her hands burnt from the force field.

In the distance there were the approaching sounds of people running and shouting for reinforcements and healers.

* * *

Loki lay still within the examination capsule as the healers tried and failed to remove the entity from his body. He watched Thor and Odin arguing over what to do with him, and Frigga looking at him with eyes full of worry.

"He cannot be destroyed, the Aether will protect him."

"It will destroy him in time, the energy is too great."

"The Dark Elves will not cease their attack on Asgard so long as the Aether remains here."

Loki closed his eyes, he felt tired, very tired.

He woke again to find himself lying on the bottom of a flying skiff, a cloak draped over him. Loki propped himself up shakily and turned to see that Thor was steering the craft. He looked around them and saw that they were in a different world, dark and cold, barren of life.

"Svartalfheimm," breathed Loki.

"Do you live then?" asked Thor. Loki looked up quickly to see a flash of unexpected sympathy in his eyes.

"Yes, brother," Loki replied, without the sarcasm he usually employed. "How did we come to be here?"

"Heimdall discovered a secret passageway between our worlds, in the side of a mountain, no bigger than the eye of a needle, I nearly broke the skiff apart trying to get through."

Loki smiled a little. "That's my secret passageway," he said.

Thor grinned. "Not anymore."

For a moment it was like it had been in the past, when they had played together and fought together, side by side.

"What will happen to me?" Loki asked, trying to get to his feet and settling for leaning against the side of the skiff.

"The Dark Elf, Malekith, will draw the Aether from you as he desires it for himself. And when he does, I shall destroy it."

Loki shook his head. "You cannot destroy it."

"What do you mean?"

"It is an elemental, I can feel it. What it is, the universe is made of." Loki slumped a little and then passed out again.

In the darkness the voice spoke to him soothingly as it breathed against him, warm and comforting.

Loki was dragged awake again by the sounds of fighting. He was on the hard surface of the planet, and as he opened his eyes he saw Thor fall to the ground near him, unconscious, his hammer several feet away.

Loki struggled to his feet and saw that he was surrounded by Dark Elves. Their leader, Malekith stood before him, and by his side a Kursed, huge and fearsome. Loki felt weak beyond measure and he could only stare at them.

Malekith raised his hand and Loki drifted upward, suspended in the air, his arms drifting out to his sides of their own accord. Slowly, achingly, the Aether was drawn out of him. It hurt more than anything he had ever experienced, as if it were being ripped out of him. When it had been drawn completely from him, Loki fell back to the ground, but his body was his own again and he landed on his feet. He tried to summon his magic for a defense but there was an emptiness in him that made him feel hollow and bereft.

The Dark Elves were uninterested in him, instead gazing intently at the gathering dark red cloud of energy above them. Malekith pulled in the air with his hand, summoning the Aether to inhabit his own body. There was a tension building, a resistance. Malekith's expression changed to anger. Instead of entering his body, the Aegir was coalescing, gaining shape, becoming solid.

"The Asgardian is interfering, the Aether wishes to return to his body," Malekith said harshly.

The Kursed growled and moved towards Loki. He watched it approach with a paralyzing certainty of death. There was nowhere to run to, he did not have the strength to defend himself, now he would die alone and forsaken.

So it was his birthright after all.

The Kursed's blade ran through his chest and took his breath from him. For a moment he stared into the creature's intense blue eyes, and then the blade was cruely drawn out again, metal edges catching at his flesh and bone as it withdrew. Loki fell on his back, convulsing, his eyes fixed on the darkened sky.

Malekith smiled and raised his hand again to summon the Aether to him, but the entity was now rapidly turning into a solid form, and at last in a swirl of red, it did so.

Thor, regaining consciousness, saw the being and could not understand what he was looking at other than that it frightened him. It was both alien and utterly familiar, like something he had known all his life. A slimly-built man with obsidian-black hair that flowed down his back, pale skin that was almost white, a heart-shaped face. His eyes were closed and his head bent down. His clothing was similar to Loki's but of the same dark red that the Aether had been.

Malekith looked at the being in confusion, the Aether was always parasitical, never taking form on its own.

"Aether," he said. A command, a rebuke.

The Aether raised its head slowly and looked at him with red-gold eyes, then, slowly, smiled widely, gleefully, savagely.

Malekith and the other Dark Elves moved back, fanning out in an attack position around this new threat. The Kursed growled warningly.

The Aether grinned still wider, never taking its eyes from Malekith.

Then there was nothing but destruction. Odin had warned Thor of the Aether's brutal energy, but still he did not feel prepared for the sight.

The Dark Elves were not merely defeated, they were crushed, obliterated, like rock powdering under a hammer's blow. In the near distance, the great ships of Svartalfheimm trembled and fell, shattering into pieces, sending the dust of the planet's surface up around them.

The swirling dust settled and with horror, Thor saw the being turn in Loki's direction. He summoned his hammer to him and darted forward.

"Do not touch him!" he bellowed, and then halted in mid-air, caught in the middle of his arcing flight by the Aether, who had done no more than turn his head in Thor's direction. For a moment Thor stared into the face of the Aether. It was still grinning, a look of extreme enjoyment in its strange eyes.

As Thor stared, a portal opened up behind him. He sensed, without being able to see, that on the other side of the portal was the central hall of his father's palace in Asgard. Then he was sucked through the portal and it closed, leaving the Aether alone with Loki.

Loki was shivering violently now and he struggled to speak when the Aether dropped to its knees by his side and put an arm around his shoulders, cradling him.

The Aether's wide smile was unchanging but Loki, looking into its face, did not feel fear. The loss he had experienced when Malekith had drawn the Aether from him was replaced by a desperate desire to be taken into the being, to be made safe.

"D..dying," he stuttered urgently. "Nnn..need you."

The Aether did not speak, instead it plunged its hand deep into Loki's chest.

Loki cried out in pain, dark lines threading across his skin as his body broke down inside. But the Aether held him fast, its fingers wrapped around his heart. Tendrils of dark red writhed out smoke-like from the Aether and coiled along Loki's limbs. The Aether's touch was torment itself and Loki writhed helplessly.

The Aether leaned closer to Loki and whispered to him in a voice like the voice of fire and flame.

"This is not death, Loki, you are not dying. I am making sure of that."

Loki's eyes fixed on the Aether's and his panic ceased. He trusted it without having any idea why.

"Because I understand you, Loki. Because I have chosen you and no other." The Aether's voice softened and now it was like before, when it had spoken to Loki inside his mind, as gentle as silk.

And miraculously, the pain changed as well, changed into something else entirely, something which nevertheless gripped Loki just as absolutely and unavoidably.

His lips parted as he tried to speak, and could not, the urge that he now felt welled up in his throat and silenced him. Loki was aroused beyond measure by his desire for the being, and his need was being answered, overwhelmingly, with an increasing voltage of power that was beyond his comprehension.

If it was possible, the Aether's smile widened still further. The Aether's hand was buried to the wrist in Loki's chest, rewriting the laws of his body, erasing his mortal wound, retracting the damage that had spread through him. And at the same time, it built Loki's pleasure to the same unbearable height as the pain that had only moments before claimed him entirely.

Loki's spine arched, the back of his head pressing back against the Aether's cradling arm. It was too much, the pleasure would break him apart. His fingers dug into the Aether's shoulder and he tried to pull himself back from the edge, and could not. He was entirely at the being's mercy.

He felt the tendrils of dark red smoke entering his blood, singing through his veins, and his heart beat steadily within the Aether's grasp, no longer faltering and failing.

Loki gave a final, shuddering cry of agony and release, drowning in the Aether's unfathomable eyes.

"You are mine," hissed the Aether, just as Loki lost consciousness. "Mine and mine alone."

* * *

When Loki opened his eyes again, he felt awake and alive for the first time since the Aether had infected him. Someone had brought the cushions from the flying skiff for him to lie on, and someone had covered him with a cloak. Loki sat up slowly and examined his chest. His clothing and leather armor was still torn but his skin was whole and smooth.

He appeared to have been bedded down in a sheltered corner next to a rock formation. He was still in Svartalfheimm, under the darkened sky. Loki turned and saw that the Aether was sitting close by, watching the landscape with a thoughtful expression. Its beautiful face quiet and peaceful. A warmth spread through Loki when he saw it and he knew he was glad it was still there.

The Aether turned its head towards Loki and the wide smile returned to its face. Loki reached out his hand carefully and touched the side of its face, then cupped it. The Aether closed its eyes with pleasure and leaned into the caress.

"Aether…" Loki began slowly.

"That is the name Malekith gave me long ago," said the Aether in its low, soft voice. "Name me in your own tongue."

"I name you...Aro," said Loki, and reached out with his magic, using the naming to bind the being to him.

The being grinned wider. "And who am I, Loki?" it asked.

Loki grinned back. A wicked smile, a beautiful smile, past pain and present joy.

"You are mine, Aro," he replied, and pulled the being to him. "Mine alone," he whispered against its lips before they met.


End file.
